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EEVIEW 



ADMINISTRATION OF GENERAL PIERCE. 



ANTI-NEBRASKA, ANTI-ADMINISTRATION AND 
ANTI-RUM PLATFORM 



SPEECH 



HON. JAMES E. COOLEY, 



AT A MEETING OF THE DEMOCRACY, ASSEMBLED ON SATURDAY, NOV. 4th, 1854 , 
AT THE TILLAGE OF PATCHOGUE, IN SUFFOLK CO., L. I. 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 49 ANN STREET. 

1854. 






By trar- :' r 
H '06 



SPEECH. 



Fellow-Citizens: — I thank you for the highly flattering 
and friendly manner in which you have been pleased to receive 
me at this time ; and I avail myself of this, the first opportunity 
I have ever had, to thank you publicly and in person, for the 
generous support I have received when a candidate in this Dis- 
trict for public office, from the noble-hearted Democracy of 
Patchogue ; which, in proportion to population, was, at the last 
election, greater than was given me by any other town in the 
State. Be assured, fellow-citizens, that these impressive manifes- 
tations of your kind regard, I can never forget. 

When, scarcely one short year ago, while a candidate before 
the people for an important State office, in vindicating my posi- 
tion and the patriotic course of those who stood with me on the 
important question of completing our unfinished public works ; 
and in repelling a malignant and unjustifiable personal attack, 
which appeared just on the eve of our State election, in the 
Washington Union, the official organ of General Pierce, uttering, 
as I had good reason to know, the unmanly sentiments, if not, 
indeed, the reprehensible language of the Executive, I felt it to 
be my duty, as it was my undoubted right, to criticise somewhat 
severely, the insane policy of the Federal administration, and 
condemned, as it deserved, the treacherous conduct of the Presi- 
dent of the United States, an army of sycophantic expectants of 
presidential pap and plunder, " bending the suppliant hinges of 
the knee " in humiliating and degrading homage before the pitiful 
circumstance of power which has so signally soiled and disgraced 



the highest office in the gift of the American people, screeched a 
hideous howl from one end of the country to the other, giving to 
my remarks at Syracuse, a celebrity, little less than that attained 
for the star-spangled inaugural verbiage of the President ; which, 
that feeble functionary, on taking possession of the White House, 
so pompously pronounced from the steps of the Capitol. While 
some of these empty -hearted, unprincipled minions of place and 
public plunder, did not hesitate to abuse the irresponsible cabinet 
of General Pierce, and were daily charging its members with 
every conceivable corruption and meanness, they, nevertheless, 
took the ground, contrary to the theory and practice of our pop- 
ular system of government, that the President, though indebted 
to the people for his exalted position, was, like the Pope of Rome 
or the Czar of Russia, a kind of sacred person, raised so entirely 
above the reach of those by whom he had been elected, that, of 
his official acts, however flagrant and detrimental to the public 
interest, no one could, without a violation of good taste and the 
courtesy due to our " worthy chief magistrate," even express a 
common criticism ! Thus these suppliant gastric juices of dema- 
gogism sought to elevate the President so high in the scale of 
power, as to be, in fact, accountable for his public conduct to no 
one. They seemed inclined to make of him a sort of political 
Alexander Selkirk monarch of all he surveyed ; or rather, a kind 
of privileged animal, like Mrs. Winklebottom's monkey, who 
might run riot and kick up a row whenever he should take a 
fancy ; and could plunge us into all sorts of' difficulty at home 
and abroad, arraying one section of the country against the 
other, threatening even the dissolution of the Union itself, and 
yet escape without censure or rebuke ! 

Such was the wild and unwarrantable ground taken by the cor- 
rupt and huckstering politicians among the "Ilards," who, while 
pretending to be desperately mad with, and opposed to, the short- 
boy, shoulder-hitting spoilsmen among the "Softs," discovered, 
nevertheless, a common roosting-place with these worthies on the 
public plunder. Hence they found no difficulty, on the meeting 
of Congress, in concentrating their united strength on that most 
adroit administrator of the spoils, Mr. Forney, whom they elected 
to the clerkship of the House, as an accomplished instrument of 
their nefarious schemes of corruption and their designs on the 
public treasury. They united in a general denunciation of all who 



had the independence to expose their villany and condemn the 
treasonable conduct of the President, through whose weakness, 
imbecility and faithlessness to the public interest, they hoped to 
accomplish and carry out their stupendous plans of pillage and 
fraud upon the people of the United States. They exerted all 
their united influence and ability in advocating the adoption of 
the Gadsden Treaty ; whereby ten millions of the people's money 
was abstracted from the treasury and foolishly lavished on the 
tyrant of Mexico and his mercenary tools, about the dramshops, 
brothels and gambling hells of the Capitol. They raised all 
but heaven and earth to induce Congress to place ten millions of 
dollars more of the public treasure in the hands of General Pierce, 
for fillibustering on Cuba and for other corrupt and unjustifiable 
purposes. They sold out the foreign appointments and pocketed 
the price which was paid by incompetent men, who now fill di- 
plomatic positions abroad, to the injury of the public interest and 
the disgrace of the Federal Government. They zealously advo- 
cated and carried through Congress the wasteful appropriations 
asked for by General Pierce, amounting in a single year to the 
enormous sum of more than seventy millions of dollars ; an 
amount unparalleled in the appropriations of any previous ad- 
ministration, under whatever state of the country. Though pro- 
fessedly opposed to General Pierce, they exerted themselves to 
the full extent of their influence and power to insure the passage 
of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and Nebraska swindle 
bill ; the only public measure on which the President and his 
broken- winded cabinet rely for support before the American peo- 
ple. By intrigue, trick, chicanery, and fraud, they unwisely 
sought to commit the National Democratic party in this State 
to the same pernicious measure which has sunk General Pierce 
and his paltry pettifogging cabinet to the bottomless pit of the 
people's contempt, defeated Bronson's election, and broken down 
the Hunker, hard-shell organization. They have set upon and 
hunted down, by the most unmanly and wicked means, every 
honest democratic delegate in Congress from this State, who 
dared to act with any independence, and in opposition to the 
reprehensible policy of President Pierce and his phalanx of pil- 
laging marauders. By fraudulent misrepresentations, gross de- 
ception, and mean, shuffling tricks, they have vainly tried to re- 
pudiate the regular nominations of members for Congress and 



6 

other important offices, which, had been fairly made by properly 
constituted national democratic conventions ; and they have 
raised as standard-bearers for those offices the names of their old, 
broken-down party hacks, who never were nominated by the 
people for any office, and whom the people have long since es- 
chewed. To the extent of their feeble ability, they have sedu- 
lously endeavored to convert the Democratic party into a corrupt 
common carrier of duplicity, swindling, and fraud ; — making it 
a dishonest vehicle of their astounding schemes for plundering 
the State and national treasury. Under the garb of personal 
friendship and political support, they have in a mean and 
cowardly manner stabbed those in the dark whom they dared 
not meet in open combat, while fighting manfully and effectually 
the battles of the Democratic party, without the hope or expec- 
tation of pay or reward. In fine, they have acted dishonorably 
and dishonestly towards their own and all other political parties ; 
and they are now floundering with their distinguished prototype 
in treachery, General Pierce, in the common slough of the peo- 
ple's scorn and contempt ! 

Such, fellow-citizens, are the unkennelled pack of political 
vermin, who howled last year over the public plunder so fero- 
ciously, against me and all other national democrats, who had 
the independence to expose and denounce their infamous con- 
duct, and the stupendous perfidy of the President of the United 
States. 

" Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur cum illis.''' 

The times have so changed since the exhaustion of the presi- 
dential patronage ; and since the people, every where throughout 
the land, have lifted up their voices at the polls in tens and 
hundreds of thousands, so emphatically expressive of their entire 
disapproval and utter repudiation of the wicked and pernicious 
policy of the feeble administration of General Pierce, that, were 
one so inclined, the opinion I expressed of the President and his 
mercenary dependents, a year ago, might be re-uttered with inter- 
est, and not a grovelling cur of all that inglorious, pillaging pack, 
who growled and barked so loudly then, would now raise a single 
yelp in defence of the President, or in palliation of his incon- 
ceivable wickedness and folly ! 

But, the true spoilsman wastes not his ammunition on crip- 



pled and indifferent game. Nor is it the part of enlightened 
philanthropy to weep over a dead ass. 

It so happens that I said, at a more opportune moment than 
the present, about all that I care to say of General Pierce and 
his broken-down, defeated, and nearly defunct administration ; 
the members of which have been politically gibbeted and their 
bones now rattle in the whirlwind of the people's wrath ! It 
would therefore be an inexcusable intrusion to waste any more 
time over the political remains of General Pierce ; who has con- 
trived, by his unaccountable weakness, treachery and folly, to 
reduce his political followers, by whom he was so triumphantly 
borne into power, from an overwhelming host to a small squad of 
dependent office- holding mercenaries, scarcely sufficient for pall- 
bearers at the requisite solemnities on the termination of his official 
career, and to wail a requiem over his inglorious political grave. 
It is now my purpose to consider briefly a much more important 
subject — to say a few words, by your patient indulgence, about 
the ill-advised and mischievous measure of the President and his 
reckless coadjutors, commonly called the "Kansas and Nebraska 
swindle ;" a measure fraught with more danger to the stability 
of the institutions of freedom — more threatening to the perma- 
nency of the Federal Union — more destructive of the tranquillity 
and well-being of the American people — more detrimental to the 
public interest, and more calculated to encourage sectional feeling 
and foster bad faith between the North and the South — than all 
the other vicious legislation of Congress, or all the snobbish 
statesmanship with which the country has hitherto been so 
lamentably afflicted. 

The principles and provisions of this reprehensible measure, 
conceived in an evil hour, and brought forth at an unpropitious 
moment, by a political aspirant, under the bribe of prospective 
elevation to the presidency, assail the very foundation and sub- 
structure of the Constitution, and overturn the settled policy of 
the Government, which has been confirmed and re-confirmed and 
approved by the people every where — North, South, East and 
West — for more than half a century ! 

Previously to the cession to the old confederation, of the 
Northwest Territory, in 1784, by Virginia and other States, the 
idea of extending slavery beyond the limits of the slave States, 
as they then existed, had not, probably, entered the brain of a single 



8 

individual in either the northern or southern section of the Union. 
And, as it had already been very clearly demonstrated, that slave 
and free labor could not go on prosperously hand and hand in the 
same State, the people at the North, early in the history of our go- 
vernment, wisely resolved to elevate labor by the total abolition of 
slavery in the States now free ; while the South, being different- 
ly situated with respect to climate, soil and production, found its 
interest best subserved, or thought so apparently, by a continu- 
ance of the old system of slavery, first unfortunately introduced 
by the mother country, while we were yet dependent colonies ; 
and which was entailed upon us, after the close of our revolution- 
ary struggles, as a curse to the happiness, and a blight to the 
prosperity, of the people of the United States. However much 
this determination of the people of the South to hold their fellow- 
men in perpetual bondage, was deplored by the true friends of 
freedom at the North, they nevertheless conceded at once the 
right of the Southern States, to adopt the domestic policy of their 
own choice and to regulate and govern their own State institu- 
tions strictly in conformity with the wishes of their own people. 
There has never been any departure from this commendable line 
of conservative conduct among the true men and the masses at 
the North ; nor is there likely to be any change in this policy 
unless the aggressive principles of slavery be -unwisely insisted 
on by the slaveholders of the South, so as to bring the two sec- 
tions into hostile collision, on this exciting and highly interesting 
point at issue now before the country. 

Notwithstanding what has already been done and said in and 
out of Congress — it is yet believed by men of great intelligence, 
who are supposed to have the best means for acquiring and un- 
derstanding the true state of public opinion at the South, that the 
pervading sentiment among the great body of the people there, 
is in favor of maintaining inviolate all the compromises of the 
Constitution, and all the compacts entered into between the North 
and the South, in good faith, and acquiesced in by the whole 
body of the American people in all sections of the Union. I 
trust this may be so ; but, before the most implicit confidence 
can be accorded to this opinion, it will be necessary for our South- 
ern fellow-citizens to show, by some decided act, a manifest disap- 
proval of the iniquitous policy of the administration of General 
Pierce, in wantonly opening up, at this time, the question of 



slavery extension, with all its accompanying difficulties and dan- 
gers to the stability of the Union. The South should be made 
to understand that, while the great body of the people in the free 
States, (which are more than two to one of the white population 
in the slave States,) concede all the rights and privileges claimed 
for the " peculiar institution ;" and that they have no wish, what- 
ever, to interfere with its actual existence in the respective slave 
States ; yet, so far as the extension of slavery into new territory, 
belonging alike to all sections of the United States is concerned, 
they do not yield one iota of their clearly expressed constitutional 
rights, to enter into a full and free discussion of the whole ques- 
tion on its merits ; and to decide it as may be deemed most likely 
to subserve best the public interest and the common cause of 
humanity. To claim, as Southern politicians have hitherto 
claimed, the right under the Constitution, to move into any part 
of the free territory of the United States, with their slaves, and 
hold them there in bondage, is to claim no less than the entire 
and total exclusion of freedom and free labor from all such terri- 
tory so occupied ; since the whole history of slavery, here in the 
United States and elsewhere, very clearly shows the impractica- 
bility of the prosperous subsistence of the two systems of freedom 
and slavery in the same territory. 

The framers of the Constitution and the sages of the Revolu- 
tion, who devised and passed the ordinance of 1787, first sug- 
gested by Thomas Jefferson, the great Apostle of Democracy, 
understood this question perfectly. They knew well enough that 
slave labor and free labor could not work equally well and pros- 
perously together ; and hence, the exclusion of slavery from the 
Northwest Territory, (which was then an uninhabited wilder- 
ness,) with the important reservation to the slave owner, that, 
"any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service 
is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive 
may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming 
his or her labor or services as aforesaid." This was all that the 
South then claimed for the interests of slavery, from a territory, 
too, which had been ceded to the United States by Virginia, — 
the most powerful and populous of all the slave States. And that 
was, indeed, a great concession ; from that day, the people of the 
free States became slave-catchers for the South ; and, as the same 
principle, and almost the same language, became subsequently, 



10 

a part of the Constitution, the hateful task has continued to be 
imposed on us down to the present day ; and must be performed, 
the South keeping their part of the Constitutional compacts, 
until the Constitution itself shall have been essentially changed 
or amended, in this particular provision of it, which is in the 
following words : " no person held to service or labor in one 
State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in con- 
sequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from 
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labor may be due." 

Here is what the Constitution, in almost precisely the language 
of the ordinance of 1787, guarantees to the slaveholders, with 
respect to the recovery of their fugitive property, escaping into 
free territory. It was in pursuance of this provision of the Con- 
stitution that the Fugitive Slave Law, with the other great adjust- 
ment measures of 1850, were so triumphantly carried through 
Congress, by the patriotic exertions of Webster, Cass, Clay, 
Dickinson, and other distinguished members of that body ; and 
which have been faithfully observed and acquiesced in, by the 
great mass of the people every where throughout the free States. 
But, those great compromise measures of 1850, which so effectu- 
ally allayed the fearful excitement and dangerous agitation among 
the people, growing out of the free soil movements of 1848, were, 
at the time of their becoming a law of the land, considered by 
the people of the free States, and by them they have ever since 
been regarded as a part only, of the great compromises entered 
into, and to be observed in good faith by all the parties thereto ; 
whereby the question of slavery extension was determined be- 
tween the North and the South, and settled for ever. These meas- 
ures were regarded as auxiliary to, and, in all respects, confirma- 
tory of, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the ordinance of 
1787 ; and not (as was contended by the unfortunate senator, 
who, unwisely for himself, and for the administration of General 
Pierce, as well as for the country at large, introduced the Kansas 
and Nebraska bill) to supersede or make void, what had been so 
well and wisely done by Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Clay, 
Dane, and other distinguished patriots, of a by-gone time. The 
men who were most influential in achieving the great adjustment 
acts of 1850, did not then, nor have they since, considered them- 
selves so much wiser than their patriotic forefathers, the authors of 



11 

the Revolution, the framers of the Constitution, and the founders 
of the government and free institutions of the United States, as 
to justify them in tearing up and throwing to the winds, the very 
foundation on which the Constitution and the Federal Govern- 
ment have ever stood, and are now sustained. 

If Senator Douglas, who happened to be out of his seat on 
the passage of the compromise measures of 1850, had suggested, 
at that time, a repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he would have 
found that the giant intellect of Young America would not have 
sustained any such insane movement in that Senate. It required 
four years more of intellectual and political culture of the 
"giant;" and just such a pitiful executive spectacle, as is now 
on public exhibition at Washington ; together with one of the 
most inefficient, disorderly, and mercenary legislative bodies that 
ever assembled in the Capitol, to perpetrate that political enor- 
mity ; which will stand as a statutory tombstone over their public 
remains long after its author and all its abettors shall have passed 
away. 

Why was this mischievous deed done ? What necessity was 
there for repealing an act to which the circumstances under 
which it had been passed gave all the moral force and validity 
of a positive provision of the Constitution ? 

The Southern advocates of the Nebraska act pretend that it 
was a boon offered to the slaveholding interests by the North, 
which, although not asked for, they could not refuse ! 

This Missouri Compromise was a Southern measure, suggested 
by the South, and passed by a majority of Southern members 
of Congress — against the voice of the free States ; which they, 
however, acquiesced in, and regarded as a sacred compact, which 
the South ought to stand by and deprecate all attempts of schem- 
ing demagogues, North or South, for its repeal. 

This, however, was not done. While petitions poured in to 
Congress by thousands, from all parts of the free States, against 
the repeal, scarcely a voice was raised in the slave States in oppo- 
sition to it ; and the delegates from the South, in both Houses of 
Congress, without distinction of party, voted for that act with an 
unanimity which filled the minds of patriotic and reflecting men, 
every where at the North, with amazement and concern. They 
saw in this unjustifiable act of bad faith on the part of the South, 
a determination to augment slavery influence every where, to the 
extent of slaveholding ability ; and with that view Southern 



12 

Senators seem to have confirmed the acts and strengthened the 
now almost powerless hands of the Federal Executive, in his base 
attempts last year, by the removal of Bronson and other conser- 
vative democrats from office, to " crush out," (as a Northern 
member of the cabinet said,) and break down their tried and un- 
flinching friends in the free States ; men who have stood by the 
South in the firm support of all their just rights under the Con- 
stitutional guarantees and compromises of the government, in 
perilous and troublesome times. Conservative Democrats in the 
free States, who perilled their all and suffered so much in the 
struggles of 1848, breasting the storm of free soil, raised under the 
waning banner of Van Buren, against the institutions of the 
South, do not look with indifference nor with satisfaction on the 
ill attention and worse support they have received in the day of 
their desertion by a treacherous Executive, from the hands of the 
South, whence they had a right to expect so much, but have, 
indeed, received no aid at all. 

Conservative Democrats of the free States will not, however, 
act inconsistently with their well-known and well-established 
principles; but they will firmly require the South to abide by, 
in good faith, all the compromises of the government, with re- 
spect to the question of slavery extension, which now, owing 
mainly to the ill-advised conduct of Southern delegates in 
Congress, and the venality and inexcusable villainy of political 
huckters at the North, fills the minds of the true friends of the 
Union and of freedom, with serious apprehension and alarm. 
They believe that the common territory of the United States, 
under the Constitution, has no absolute political rights ; that the 
Congress have the power to govern such territory, which cannot 
constitutionally be transferred to any other authority ; nor has 
any attempt ever been made by any legislation of the country to 
transfer that power from the hands where it was constitutional- 
ly lodged, until that intended by the passage of the Nebraska 
bill. The language of the Constitution is clear and distinct on 
this point ; and no one who reads it attentively can be mistaken 
with respect to the full force and meaning of it. It says : " The 
Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful 
rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property 
belonging to the United States." That is all there is in the Con- 
stitution about the territory of the United States, and it is enough; 



13 

it is comprehensive, definitive, absolute and -conclusive; clearly 
placing the power to govern the territory, where the framers of 
that great instrument evidently intended it should be placed, in 
Congress ; and no power on earth, except a revolution, can trans- 
fer it to other hands, or absolve Congress from the duty which 
the Constitution imperatively imposes upon that body, to "make 
all needful rules and regulations in the territory of the United 
States," and to govern it. This is the well-settled opinion of all 
intelligent and properly demeaned men throughout the country. 
The policy of the government ever since the first clay of its estab- 
lishment, under the Constitution, has been in strict accordance 
with, and has sanctioned in all respects, this sound and incontro- 
vertible doctrine. Hence, Congress from time to time has estab- 
lished governments for the new territory of the United States ; 
and in all cases, Congress has made the necessary appropriations 
from the common funds of the United States for the support of 
such government. It is true, that the Nebraska and Kansas act 
authorizes the squatters resident in those territories, to elect the 
members of their own local assemblies. But, what does that 
amount to ? ' They cannot, even, with the full approval and sanc- 
tion of their Governor, (who is an appointee of the President, and 
has an unlimited veto power,) pass an act of any kind, not even 
for establishing common schools, the maintenance of the poor, 
or for laying out and repairing highways, which may not be con- 
stitutionally annulled by the Congress, to which these very mem- 
bers of territorial assemblies, so elected by the squatters thereof, 
must look for their per diem compensation ! If this be true, and 
I challenge its refutation, where is the boasted " popular sov- 
ereignty," so much talked of, which the friends of the Kansas bill 
contend is sought to be conferred by that bad act upon the people 
of the territories ? The Kansas and Nebraska act, so recently 
designed, by a corrupt clique of huckstering politicians, derisively 
denominated "Patent-right Hard Shells," to be made the only test 
of true democracy in this State, confers no popular rights or 
sovereignty upon the people of the territories ; except that it 
authorizes, by an unjust repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the 
legalization, by territorial enactments, of slavery, where it had been 
prohibited, by a decree of the French Government before it be- 
came the territory of the United States, and, subsequently, by a 
solemn act of Congress, for a period of more than sixty years ! 



14 

This is all there is in that bad act that even squints at " popular 
sovereignty ;" and this is just all that the authors of that act in- 
tended it should embrace, of that character. 

This administration measure, the Nebraska act, among other 
misnomers, is called by some of its peculiar friends a "Non- 
intervention Act ; " which, they absurdly contend, takes out of 
Congress, for ever, the vexed question of slavery extension, and 
leaves the whole adjustment of that matter in the hands of the 
inhabitants of the territories. This, if true, would be a very im- 
portant point to attain, and well worth the serious consideration 
and attention of every patriotic friend of freedom in the United 
States. But it is merely a preposterous pretension, asserted, with 
other falsehoods, to deceive the people. The provisions of the 
act intervene, and interpose obstructions at once, in the way of 
freedom, by a repeal of laws, both of France and of the United 
States, whereby this territory was declared free to all intents and 
purposes. And yet this act of abominations is called a " non- 
intervention act," calculated to allay excitement and discussion 
on the slavery question, and exclude it from Congress for ever ! 

How is this question to be taken out of Congress by the act 
for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ? Or how allay agi- 
tation and excitement on the question of slavery extension in the 
territories ? It will produce no such desirable results ; but, on 
the contrary, it will increase, and has already increased a thou- 
sand fold the agitation and excitement of the people on this ques- 
tion, both in and out of Congress. And the next Congress will 
be very likely to repeal this miscalled "non-intervention act," re- 
storing the latitude line of the slavery restriction act of 1820 ; and 
I should not be very much surprised if the Fugitive Slave Law 
went by the board along with it. It would have been better in 
all respects, had the authors of that bad scheme had the common 
fairness to have stated in the outset that] their intention was, 
through the perfidious treachery of the President of the United 
States, (who went into power pledged to put down all agitation 
on the slavery question,) and by means of bribery and other cor- 
rupt devices, to pass an act which should effectually and per- 
manently convert a part of the free territory of the United Stales 
into a land of bondage. That would have been an open, per- 
haps I should say, manly course of procedure; most certainly it 
would, contrasted with that which has been selected to deceive 



15 

and mislead the great body of the people with respect to the real 
meaning and true intent of the act. 

The people, however, have proved themselves to be far too 
well informed, and every way too intelligent to have been so 
easily duped by the deception and fraud of the authors and 
abettors of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ; as is very 
clearly manifested, by the overwhelming defeat at the polls 
every where in the free States that have recently held elections, 
of the administration and the friends of the Nebraska Bill. The 
friends of freedom have, however, gained one important con- 
cession in the passage of that bill, on the part of its advocates, 
who have hitherto contended that Congress had no right to legis- 
late with respect to the question of slavery in the territories ; for 
the bill itself manifestly presupposes such a right, and sanctions 
such legislative interference by Congress, which has undoubtedly 
the power, under the Constitution, to legislate for and govern the 
territories of the United States in regard to slavery and all other 
matters relating thereto. This point once conceded on the part 
of the South, as it has been most undoubtedly by all the members 
of Congress from the slave States who voted for the Nebraska 
act, it can no longer be contended that the people of the free 
States, by taking part in the legislation of the country, for the 
exclusion of slavery from free territory, seek to assail the insti- 
tutions of the South, as they constitutionally exist in the slave 
States. Whenever the question of slavery restriction from free 
territory has hitherto been before Congress in any way, or pub- 
licly discussed in the free States, a hue-and-cry has been raised 
by an unprincipled, office-seeking, spoil-hunting, trading squad 
of political gamblers at the North, and the taskmasters and venal 
presses at the South, about fanatics at the North and an intended 
assault by the friends of freedom, on the "peculiar institutions" 
of the slave States. This is no fair way to meet and dispose of a 
great question of State policy which concerns the people of all 
parts of the Union, — those of the free States no less deeply than 
the slaveholders of the South. I am no friend of fanatics, nor 
advocate of fanaticism, North or South. I am in favor of fair 
dealing, and of keeping in good faith the binding compromises 
of the Constitution and the sacred compacts of the government, 
inviolate, believing, as I most sincerely do, that the stability and 
prosperity of the Union can in no other way be sustained. 



16 

The question of slavery restriction in the Nebraska and Kan- 
sas territory is certainly one in which the friends of freedom 
ought to be heard without becoming in any way obnoxious to 
the charge of fanaticism. They have a legitimate and good 
ground of complaint, and they do earnestly complain of the un- 
fairness of those in the slave interest, and the office-hunting mer- 
cenaries in the free States, beeause of the unjust repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise ; with a view, as is most manifest, to the 
immediate introduction and legalization of slavery north of 36° 
30' ; where they had, under the act admitting the State of Mis- 
souri into the Union, a right to expect the institutions of freedom 
and free labor would be respected and allowed to exist undis- 
turbed. The South agreed to relinquish to the cause of free- 
dom and the sacred rights of humanity the territory acquired 
from France in 1803, north of 36° 30', at the time it was con- 
ceded to them to hold slaves south of that line of latitude ; and 
they clearly thought, on the passage of the Missouri Compromise 
act, that they had out-legislated the friends of freedom, and got 
the better of the non-slaveholding States, as was no doubt the 
case. 

Mr. Pinckney, a distinguished member of Congress at that 
time from South Carolina, wrote, under date of March 2d, 1820 : 
" We have carried the question to admit Missouri and all Louisi- 
ana, south of 36° 30', free of the restriction of slavery, and give 
the South, in a short time, an addition of six, and perhaps eight 
members to the Senate of the United States. It is considered 
here, by the slaveholding States, as a great triumph. To the 
north of 36° 30' there is to be, by the present law, restrictions, 
which, you will see, by the votes, I voted against. But it is at 
present of no account ; it is a vast tract, uninhabited, only by 
savages and wild beasts, in which not a foot of Indian claim to 
the soil is extinguished, and in which, according to the ideas 
prevalent, no land office will be open for a great length of time." 
Such was the opinion prevalent at the time respecting the ad- 
vantage obtained by the slaveholding interest over the friends of 
freedom ; and the admission since, of three slave States, out of 
Louisiana Territory, south of 36° 30', has, as Mr. Pinckney indi- 
cated, given the South an addition of six members in the Senate 
of the Uuited States; while the free States, under that arrange- 
ment, have only added two members to the Senate, by the ad- 



17 

mission of Iowa, the only State that has yet been created out of 
that territory, north of 36° 30'. In the mean time, Florida and 
Texas, embracing a territory of 296,589 square miles, have been 
annexed to the Union ; which, with that part of Louisiana terri- 
tory south of 36° 30', now embraced in the States of Arkansas, 
Louisiana and Missouri, enlarge the area of slavery to the extent 
of 462,598 square miles ; while the territory of Nebraska and 
Kansas, where the restriction to slavery has been removed, by 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, does not exceed 188,000 
square miles ; and much of that is a barren, uninhabitable region. 
Should it so happen that Nebraska and Kansas be eventually 
admitted into the Union as slave States, it will be perceived that 
the South will have added to their strength against the cause of 
freedom, no less than five large slave States out of the territory of 
Louisiana; which, at the time of its acquisition by this govern- 
ment, was all free ; while only one single State will have been add- 
ed to the Union out of it, excluding slavery. Is this right ; is it 
just ; is it acting in conformity with the acknowledged principles 
of common honesty and fair dealing ? Will the people of the 
free States, numbering some 15,000,000, or more, while the white 
population of the slave States scarcely exceeds 6,000,000, quietly 
submit to this flagrant outrage and inexcusable wrong? No, 
never. 

In all the free States, where elections have taken place, since 
the passage of this unwise and unjustifiable act, by the dema- 
gogues of the South, and the mercenary, doughfaced-political trick- 
sters and huckstering spoilsmen of the North, sanctioned by the 
treasonable conduct of the President of the United States, which 
has removed the restriction to slavery north of 36° 30', the most 
marked and determined opposition to it has been impressively 
manifested by the people ; who, by their votes at the polls, have 
overwhelmed the administration and its friends, with irretriev- 
able disaster and defeat. A more signal and richly-deserved 
rebuke to treachery, faithlessness, duplicity and fraud, never was 
administered, by an independent, injured and indignant nation, 
than that now being inflicted by the American people on the 
deplorable and foolish administration of General Pierce. 

This topic might be profitably dwelt upon at much greater 
length, did time permit ; but enough has already been said, I 
trust, to show the wretched policy and wickedness of the admin- 



18 

istration and its -unprincipled coadjutors, in the adoption of a 
measure, (on which, it would seem, they mainly rely for support,) 
fraught with so much mischief and danger to the federal Union, 
and so obnoxious and every way so objectionable, to the great 
body of the people in the free States. And yet, foolish and reck- 
less as the administration and its peculiar adherents have shown 
themselves to be, in urging through Congress an act of such in- 
justice and iniquity, the real patent-right, skull and cross-bone 
democrats of this State, headed by Edwin Croswell and Augus- 
tus Schell, who stabbed me in the back last fall, while a candi- 
date for comptroller, and undertook officiously, at the same time, 
the leadership of the national Democratic party, which they have 
since completely run aground, have shown themselves still more 
weak and unwise, by clutching hold of this firebrand, as if deter- 
mined to snatch it from the hands of the President, (whose fingers 
have been prodigiously burnt by it,) and make it, (the Nebraska 
Bill,) a new test of democracy in the State ! 

On this broken stool with one leg, they have succeeded in 
mounting the accomplished, pure-minded, patriotic, and estimable 
Greene 0. Bronson, as a candidate for Governor ; who, had he 
turned his back indignantly on those patent-right, skull and cross- 
bone hucksters, and their Nebraska swindle, and taken the stump 
simply on his widely-extended reputation as a man of distin- 
guished ability and acquirement, of untarnished purity of char- 
acter and unquestioned competency for the office, could have 
easily been carried into the gubernatorial chair by the votes of 
conservative men of all parties ; who, but for his indorsement of 
the Nebraska bill, would have gladly concentrated their votes on 
Judge Bronson, and rejoiced in his success. The sanction given 
by Judge Bronson to this bad, though principal measure of the 
administration, has, I regret to say, wonderfully weakened the 
strong hopes entertained by his many warm friends previous to 
the meeting of the Syracuse convention on the 12th of July, of 
his triumphant election. This lamentable result, however much 
to be regretted, is no more than was clearly foreseen and predicted, 
immediately on the publication of Judge Bronson's letter, in con- 
nection with the proceedings of the convention that nominated 
him ; and which, also, foolishly gave its sanction, by express reso- 
lutions, to the pernicious repeal of the Missouri Compromise ; 
which has been thus far overwhelmingly disastrous to all who 



19 

have in any way been instrumental in the infliction of its num- 
berless evils on the country. I trust, however, that not a single 
vote of the National Democracy Avill be withheld from the sup- 
port of Judge Bronson on account of his frankly-expressed views 
with respect to the passage of the act repealing the Missouri Com- 
promise; for, while I protest against the futile attempts on the part 
of a few uninfluential political pretenders, who have officiously 
obtruded themselves conspicuously before the public, to make 
such a preposterous test of democracy, as is the Nebraska fraud, 
we may, on personal grounds alone, without reference to his 
views on political subjects, safely and cheerfully cast our votes 
for Judge Bronson for the high office to which he has been so 
unanimously nominated by the Syracuse convention. 

With respect to the other national democratic nominees for 
State officers, I am happy in being able to say that I believe them 
all good men and true; every way competent and worthy to re- 
ceive the unbought suffrages of a free and independent people. 
If elected to the respective offices for which they have been 
nominated, they will not fail to adorn their high and important 
public positions by an able and faithful discharge of their duty 
to a generous and enlightened people. While I cannot fail 
to regret that the present member of Congress, from this district, 
Hon. James Maurice, was not re-nominated, as a deserved mani- 
festation of public approval of his patriotic conduct in relation to 
the Nebraska bill, no less than of his faithful attention at all 
times to the highly responsible duties that devolved on him 
during his residence in Washington, I have to say that Mr. D. B. 
Allen, of Eichmond, the nominee now before the people, is my 
personal friend ; and was, during my residence in that county, 
my highly esteemed and obliging neighbor. He is a gentleman 
of ability and of unblemished character ; and, if elected, as I 
trust he may be, he will, I doubt not, by his sound good sense 
and wise discretion ; by his acquaintance with business and his 
general knowledge of men and of the world ; and moreover, 
by his courtesy and gentlemany deportment, as well as by his 
accomplishments and fitness for the honorable position to which 
you design to elevate him, reflect upon the district, and upon the 
highly responsible station he may be called to occupy, an honor 
and distinction, of which his constituency may well be proud, 
and will scarcely fail to commend and long admire. 



20 

Here I might, very properly perhaps, close my remarks. I 
cannot do so, however, without paying my respects to the 
present amiable and accomplished, though, politically, deluded, 
gentleman, who now fills the gubernatorial seat of this State ; 
and who is at this time paraded before you on a drunken horse, 
as the Tap-room candidate, asking your support of him for another 
term ! It would have been an easy thing to re-elect Governor 
Seymour for the high station he now occupies, and to which he 
was borne, two years ago, by a vast majority of the legal voters 
of this State. Indeed, it would have been no very difficult mat- 
ter for him to have attained to almost any official position in the 
gift of the American people, had he, in all respects, been true to 
the established faith of the Democratic party ; true to his old 
friends ; true to the great principles and plans of public policy 
for the improvement and advancement of the interests of this 
State ; of which, at one time, they had no more able or ardent 
advocate than himself. But, Governor Seymour appears to have 
changed his views of public policy, since his election ; and now 
he is presented before you for renewed support on entirely new 
grounds, his veto of Mr. Clark's Bill, passed at the last session of 
the Legislature, for suppressing the deplorable vice of intempe- 
rance ! 

This, like the broken political plank on which unfortunately a 
few officious and obtrusive "Hardshell" hucksters have succeed- 
ed in exhibiting Judge Bronson for the same important office, is 
an untenable and obnoxious platform : which cannot long stand 
in' a community like this, depending, as it must, for its support 
mostly upon the vicious dregs and outcasts of society ; while it 
must be deprecated, detested and condemned by all good men. 

When a candidate for a highly honorable and "responsible 
public position, founds and urges his claims to it on grounds cal- 
culated, if sustained, to break down the morals, deterioate, cor- 
rupt, degrade, impoverish, and brutalize vast masses of our people; 
to fill our almshouses with paupers, and our jails and State pris- 
ons with criminals ; to augment crime of every conceivable de- 
scription, and depress virtue ; to break up the good order and 
safety of society and fill the land with desolation and distress, it 
becomes the imperative duty of every intelligent, well-demeaned 
citizen, as he values all there is in society worth living for ; the 
peace and virtue of our families, the prosperity and advancement 



21 

of our people, and the incomparable blessings of freedom, to take 
an active, efficient, and uncompromising stand, in opposition to 
such candidate, and all claims that may be urged in his favor on 
grounds so preposterous and detrimental to the good order and 
well-being of our people, and of mankind at large. While, on 
personal grounds, I have nothing whatever to say in opposition 
to Governor Seymour's re-election, I do not hesitate to declare 
that, in my opinion, no man in this State, if, indeed, in any other, 
has ever presented himself as a candidate for office on grounds 
so utterly objectionable and in all respects so pernicious to the 
best interests of the community, as those on which Governor 
Seymour and his political friends mainly rely for his election. 
It is simply the dram-shop support, and those whose pecuniary 
interests are immediately dependent on that brutalizing, degrad- 
ing and bestial business, that his Excellency now confidently 
reposes his political claims I And, in his case, it is a contest 
between virtue and vice ; order and confusion ; innocence and 
crime; purity and depravity ;' competency and poverty ; industry 
and indolence ; thrift and vagrancy ; education and ignorance ; 
plenty and poverty ; freedom and the jail ; goodness and the 
gallows ; in short, the welfare or ruin of our people. Should 
we not, then, take a firm and unflinching stand in opposition to 
the election of any man to any office, however high or otherwise, 
involving matters that concern so essentially the welfare of every 
human being in the State ? 

The Democratic party has at no time in its previous history 
presented, or attempted to present, a candidate for any office ex- 
clusively on one issue — on one interest, relying on that alone, 
and nothing else, for support. It has hitherto been considered a 
liberal party, of enlarged sympathies and enlightened views ; em- 
bracing in its fostering grasp all the great interests of the coun- 
try ; and generally taking ground against monopolies of all kinds. 
It is therefore an anomaly to see a candidate with democratic 
pretensions, leaving behind him all the great issues on which the 
Democratic party has so long and so firmly stood and effectually 
fought, and adopting a new creed of three letters and one sylla- 
ble, and only one idea and a single word, and that word, Bum ! 
This monopoly, bad as it is, can never be recognized by the mass 
of democratic voters, as legitimate and valid ; and Governor Sey- 
mour, although it is very likely he may secure a staggering 



22 

victory over the candidate of the " Hards," owing to his unwise 
indorsement of the wicked repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
will nevertheless find that a political platform, sustained only by 
Lager-beer, Gin-toddy, Whiskey, and " Aromatic schnapps," is a 
tottering and dangerous erection, on which it will be impossible 
for him to stand very steadily for any length of time. Should 
Governor Seymour succeed in being re-elected — it would be 
worse for him than defeat. Victory obtained on an issue so nar- 
row and so entirely obnoxious to the true interests of our people ; 
so insulting to the intelligence of the age — would be the knell of 
his political death ! 

Of the individual, nominated on the ticket with Governor 
Seymour for his Lieutenant; who, by his unmanly conduct, 
during a short residence at Albany, disgraced the Speaker's chair 
of the Assembly, it is quite unnecessary for me to say much at 
this time. All of you must, I dare say, have had some know- 
ledge of him during his residence on your, beautiful island. And 
you will not fail to remember the circumstances attending his 
political execution by the Syracuse convention, over which he 
was called to preside ; and how that his sad political remains 
were subsequently handed over for interment to a certain MANN 
in the village of Jamaica, who discharged the duties of under- 
taker on that occasion, secundeni artem. 

Decency demands that we tread lightly over the ashes of the 
inglorious dead, and I most willingly leave the sorry subject of 
these remarks to a long and silent repose. 



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